SAVING ALEX

Helene Vaillant gives the best picture prompts for story writing challenges. I don’t always take them, but this one creatively sparked my writing enthusiasm! So today, I take a break from talking about giving up sweets… I hope you enjoy the beginning of a story that I hope to finish in another post.

Earth had run off course recently and people were worried. Scientists warned of a possible collision with planets seemingly on the horizon.

People on earth were either praying or preparing or both. Some said that underground bunkers would be the best protection from all of the intensities of such an occurrence. Janine wondered if no one really knew what was about to happen but that doing anything to prepare gave people hope.

Janine Lawson packed out her car and was headed to a holdout bunker her brother had built underground on his West Texas ranch, a place he began preparing in 2001 after terrorism fears. She had taken a tour of it with him, it was like a small city underground.

Friends and neighbors had already moved into their homes in the underground city, and they were first met with the sign as they descended the main elevator. It said simply, Hope, in two feet high gold letters suspended from the ceiling of the new town. But, not everyone could be convinced to go.

With spotty cellular service while driving there, she was tearfully and frantically trying to convince her mother to come to Hope.

And though they were only ten minutes away from their destination, she was forced to pull her car over for her little almost three year old boy, Alex, who had been hollering that he had to go to the bathroom. Recently potty trained he would NOT “just use his pull-up pants” as she had suggested a few times.

We’re almost there!

“Potty, potty!” He demanded and in any other occasions she’d be proud at the great success of her growing up little boy.

But when he began crying the cry that every mother knows there’s no return from, she quickly spotted a post which would serve in this potty pinch.

But, as soon as she set him down by the post, a great wind blew the dusty red Texas sand right into her eyes which she shut tight and as she was attempting to right herself, she could hear her mother’s voice in the cell phone she dropped, and dizzy from the initial onslaught, she bent over blindly trying to pick him up, wiping mascara across her sleeve, trying to see.

Her arms couldn’t find him. And, she squinted her eyes in every direction, frantically running this way and that.

What she didn’t know was that her little Alex had gone running back down the road to the light.

The same light that beckoned him now completely blinded and disoriented her.

It had all happened in less than five seconds.

He was just out of reach as she lunged this way and ran that way. And he didn’t turn back for her voice trailed away with the wind.

Absolutely intriguing, what a clever story! Would you like to leave the link to this post for the challenge? Either the link to your post or a pingback, then I can include you in the roundup group sites. Thank you for sharing your talent. Here is the link to the challenge.https://helenevaillant.com/2018/12/04/what-do-you-see-dec-04-2018/

No worries, here is the link to the post: Saving Alex. All you need to do is copy this link and paste it in the comment section of the challenge.https://artonjasperlane.com/2018/12/05/saving-alex/
There are no links here in your post, neither in the challenge.